What once ensured that I sat at a table next to the teacher is now posted, Monday through Friday.

I've contributed to perhaps the best humor compilation I've ever read. Available now on Amazon!

My second chapbook, "The Second Book of Pearl: The Cats" is now available as either a paper chapbook or as a downloadable item. See below for the Pay Pal link or click on its cover just to the right of the newest blog post to download to your Kindle, iPad, or Nook. Just $3.99 for inspired tales of gin, gambling addiction and inter-feline betrayal.

My first chapbook, I Was Raised to be A Lert is in its third printing and is available both via the PayPal link below and on smashwords! Order one? Download one? It's all for you, baby!

Monday, January 5, 2015

You Should See The Cake They Give You When You Reach This Age

It started innocently enough.

Several weeks into December, and after an unsatisfying
encounter of the political Facebook kind, one in which a man in his early 20s
proffered the “known fact” that Minneapolis was the home of “people who hate
America”, I became concerned that I was too readily find-able.

“I’m going off the grid,” I told Mary.

“Hmmm,” Mary offered.“You do realize you have the kind of last name that people believe
you’ve created just for its Scrabble possibilities, yes?”

It’s true.My last
name, a hyphenated concoction thought in some circles to be a Klingon
declaration of love, is unique.Richly, densely,
even drunkenly unique.

But I was on a roll.

“I blocked him,” I said,“And I think I should change my birthday, too.I mean, even if he can remember half the
name, I want to make sure he doesn’t…”

I trail off.

“Doesn’t what,” Mary prods.“Send you a birthday card?See if you’re compatible on one of those
Chinese animal zodiac things?”Mary
chuckles softly to herself.

“Hey, now,” I say.

“Wait, wait,” she says.I hear her move the phone from one ear to the other.“Maybe he’s thinking of adding you to his
Friends and Family bundle, get ya a good deal on an extra phone line.”

There is a thudding sound, and I know without asking that
she’s just fallen off her chair and is laying on her back, tears of laughter in
her bright blue eyes.

I sigh.

There is no end to my suffering.

I let her work her way through her enjoyment, and in no
time at all she is coherent again.

“Changing your birthdate is a dumb idea,” she says.”Just remove it.”

Oddly enough, however, I could not figure out how to
remove my birthdate.

In the end, I simply changed it to January 1, 1905.

1905.

I received over 130 posts, texts, and offers of gin and
tonics on New Years Day, all filled with warm messages of love and dismay that
they’d never noticed before that I had been born on New Year’s Day, which I had
not.

Most disturbingly of all, however, was that no one
mentioned how good I looked for having just turned 110.

Icky Trolls. Exactly why I do not have a blog nor do I participate much on Facebook. Well, that and also because I'm lazy as all heck. Besides, my line of work has a tendency to place me face to face with trolls on a regular basis. I'm lucky that way.

Facebook makes it difficult to do any number of things, especially if they involve removing info about ourselves. I love that people didn't notice the year of birth...but they may have been celebrating the new year just a little too much. Enjoy it, Pearlie.

thanks for a new 2015 laugh. No reason to give FB much of anything real. My brother taking my advice told them he graduated from Jerusalem University and lives in New Jersey. He didn't go to college and might have been in New Jersey once in his life. It's good to keep them guessing.